Students' Response to Teachers' Feedback on Writing The Case of ...

First, the L2 writer’s language is characterized by being erroneous. Such errors are
inevitable, essential features and evidence of the language the writer is about <strong>to</strong> acquire. This
language, called inter-language, has been a major concern for many theories of L2
acquisition. Second, in the acquisition of a second language are involved some social and
cognitive processes which the development of the writing skill also seems <strong>to</strong> entail. Third,
both L2 learners and L2 writers exhibit different levels of achievement. What accounts for
such differences seems <strong>to</strong> be the same for both parties (individual differences,
sociopsychological fac<strong>to</strong>rs, personality, cognitive style, hemisphere specialization, learning
strategies, etc. ) The last area where L2 acquisition and L2 writing overlap is the effectiveness
of formal instruction in acquiring both of them. In short, “it is clear that second language
acquisition theory is, and will continue <strong>to</strong> be, relevant <strong>to</strong> models of how we teach and how
students learn <strong>to</strong> write in a second language”(Carson 2001:192).
According <strong>to</strong> Hedge (1998), writing is a very important, yet neglected, aspect of
language and it was not until recently that findings of research in writing have started <strong>to</strong> offer
insights in<strong>to</strong> what good writers do. She further claims that in the ESL/EFL contexts, the
teaching of such a skill is confounded by the fact that L2 writers often get confused because
they, sooner or later, recognize the existence of differences between writing conventions in
their L1 and L2. Hyland (2003:31), provides an inclusive, but not an exhaustive, list of such
differences between L1 and L2 writing:
-Different linguistic proficiencies and intuition about language.
- Different learning experiences and classroom expectations.
- Different sense of audience and writer.
- Different preferences for ways of organizing texts.
- Different writing processes.
- Different understandings of text uses and the social value of
different texts.
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